Artistic internationalism in the GDR: Looking beyond the wall

Hartmut Dorgerloh, the general director of the Humboldt Forum, seems to be keen to break down the GDR’s cliché of a walled-in country without contact with the outside world. The art historian was born in East Berlin in 1962, grew up in Potsdam and can say with biographical authority: “World interest was also possible in the GDR.”

This is what happened during the tour of the exhibition “Across Borders. Artistic Internationalism in the GDR”, which is now well hidden in the special exhibition area on the third floor and flanks the large Palace of the Republic exhibition “Hin and Away”. “Across Borders” links the works of five contemporary artists with the cultural history of the GDR.

© Minh Duc Pham

The show marks the beginning of a continuous sequence of “contemporary positions” in the Humboldt Forum, as the curators say. In the future, they want to show the house not only about the GDR and the reconstructed castle, but also about topics such as family, home and colonialism, as Dorgerloh announced.

In fact, when you enter “About Borders” you rub your eyes in surprise, so little GDR cultural history can be seen at first glance, despite the historical-sounding exhibition title. A second look, which would also mean wandering around at a loss without the accompanying brochure for “About Borders”, reveals interesting cross-references and references.

One understands how specifically the Japanese-born photographer Seiichi Furuya, who worked as an interpreter in East Berlin in the 1980s and documented life there, dealt with the GDR. The sculptures by the sculptor Su-Ran Sichling, who studied and taught in Dresden, also explore GDR phenomena.

© State Museums in Berlin / Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berlin Palace / Photo: Pierre Adenis, VG Bildkunst Bonn 2024

“Fences” is the name of a series that cites the idiosyncratic patterns of GDR metal fences, which Sichling painted colorfully and installed on the wall with shadows, telling of individual demarcation in a collectivized state. Another eye-catcher is “Look at Neighbors (Resubmission)”, for which the artist combines an abstract carpet woven in 1989 in the Textildesign Zittau circle with blue patterns for trousers. They represent the work of Vietnamese contract workers who sewed the jeans intended only for export.

The GDR fabrics and figures such as Pittiplatsch and Schnatterinchen or textile flowers by the German-Vietnamese Min Duc Pham that process FDJ flags also deal with the lives of contract workers who, for example, were forbidden by the state to become pregnant in the host country because it was theirs Productivity would have been hindered, as the artist explains during the tour.

Contract workers were not allowed to become pregnant

At the edge of the room, historical evidence of international contacts can be found in showcases. Since 2017, other exhibitions have documented the fact that art and culture in the GDR was not just about its own country, says Kerstin Pinther, curator for art in a global context at the Museum of Asian Art and the Ethnological Museum, who is responsible for “Across Borders”. draws.

For example in the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig and recently also in the Albertinum Dresden. In addition to the contract workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, students and exiles from elsewhere also came to the country.

Here in the Humboldt Forum there is a connection to Berlin, because the graphics exhibition “Intergrafik” took place in East Berlin from 1965 and the Festival of Political Song from 1970 to 1990. It is clear that the socialist brother countries were at the forefront of the artistic contacts presented there. In a booklet about “Cuban Revolutionary Graphics”, for example, or in an Amiga album with “Red Songs” from Costa Rica and Nicaragua. There are facets and highlights that “Beyond Borders” throws up, not a complete picture.